


House of Memories

by AnonymouslyDead



Series: Mirroring [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Art GAllery in Memory Palace, Hannibal's Mind Palance, Hurt/Comfort, Imaginary Will, Inprisonment, M/M, Memories, References to Hannibal Rising, Sarcastic Will, Tramuatized Hannibal Panicking, gagging, references to cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24485515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymouslyDead/pseuds/AnonymouslyDead
Summary: How Hannibal dealt with those three years in prison
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: Mirroring [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1773121
Comments: 4
Kudos: 87





	House of Memories

The confines of his imprisonment were certainly...confining. He’s paced the perimeter of his cell many times over the course of the years; it’s just big enough to remind Hannibal of a large tank at an aquarium. He’s the prowling shark, longing for the free hunt of open water.

He’s paced his cell many times with this mindset. He already has his heart set on swiping Chilton’s vital organs. His liver for a nice hash, his kidneys for meatballs, maybe his heart for a nice bolognese…He had tossed the options for his first meal to celebrate his freedom once it comes. 

“Bold of you to assume that you are leaving.” Will’s voice cut through his thoughts. Hannibal turned his head for a moment to acknowledge Will standing beside him: he was nothing more than an impression of their last meeting, a calm facade hiding stormy emotions. Hannibal turned to look out at the hallway in front of his cell. It doesn’t matter though; Will appeared right in front of him. 

“They can’t keep me here.” Hannibal thought as clearly as fact. He couldn’t say it aloud, not without giving Chilton more rubbish to publish. Nevertheless, Will nodded.

“Better plot it out carefully. The FBI won’t let you go without a fight.” Will warned.

Hannibal smiled slightly. “I’ve already got the first course plotted out, Will. Now, the main course-”

“No.” Will said with some force. ‘Don’t think about Alana like that.” 

‘Why? Don’t you find Alana a suitable entree?” Hannibal taunted. 

Will glared at him, a look that sent an excited thrill up his spine. He had missed getting any emotion out of Will. Nowadays, Will tried so hard to hide. It was tedious. This Will though didn’t hold back though. 

“You know that that isn’t what I would want.” 

“And, why would I care what you would want? You shut me out, Will. The least I can do is eat my feelings.”

“How dull.” Will said. “The vicious Doctor Lector devotes himself to petty vengeance”

“Is that what you’ve done yourself?”

Will scoffed. “I’d hardly call it petty. You did ruin my life. You put me in jail for your crimes, you messed with my mind until I started to believe I committed those crimes, you murdered more than one person I care about-” “Your point?” Hannibal cut off, his tone sharper and ruder than he’d ever use. On the inside though, he was starting to feel a heavy sense of melancholy. 

“I mean so much to you, yet you’re nothing to me. I’m glad you’re trapped and displayed like some endangered species at a zoo. It’s what you deserve.” 

Hannibal looked down at the floor to study the specks in the tile floor, that deep sense of melancholy washing over him. Hannibal let it. It was better than the oppressive boredom he felt more days than not. 

“I am sorry, Will. I hope you know that.” 

“No, you’re not. You’re just sorry you don’t have what you want.” 

With that, Hannibal shook himself out of his daze. He blinked, taking in the dim grey wall in front of him, separated by a wall of clear glass. He looked around almost as if he was expecting Will to be there. Of course, he wasn’t.

He moved to his desk and pushed around a piece of charcoal there. He set about sorting out the emotions Will had gifted him with. 

**************************************************************************

The walls of the gallery are exquisite, tastefully decorated with classical artworks on walls just plain enough to not be distracting to his memory but also compliment the pieces with accents of gold and red. Hannibal, dressed as flawlessly as he had been when he originally visited the gallery, stood looking over The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew.

“Waiting for someone?” Will appeared next to him. He is dressed just as well in a lovely grey suit that made his eyes pop. His brown curls were brushed back, but his stumble was still there. It had a sort of rugged charm to it. Hannibal couldn’t pull himself to change it, so Hannibal looked back at the painting. 

“Just good company.”

“Guess I should keep walking then.” Will joked. Hannibal smirked. 

“Nonsense. I find your mind to be fascinating.” Hannibal assured him. Will smiled at him, open and genuine. Warming even. 

“Hate to disappoint Hannibal, but I find your taste in art ironic.” 

Hannibal clicked his tongue. “More of an abstract fan?” 

“I’m not much of an art person. You know that.” 

“Ah, but it's a learned taste.” 

“So you want to condition me into art? I’m pretty sure that is unethical.” Will asked with an amused air. Hannibal allowed himself a quiet laugh.

“Would you rather I take you out?” Hannibal asked. He could imagine a few different scenarios. Taking Will to a party perhaps. Teaching him dances as memories of classical music and conversation swirled around them. A quiet walk around the woods of Wolf Trap, Virginia. A nice visit to Will’s dogs or his quaint home might be good. Or there was dinner at his old home, a quiet affair but no less intimate. Partaking of meals’ past before things got so...complicated. 

“No, I think I’d like to see what this gallery has to offer.” Will decided. Hannibal nodded, tucking his other scenarios away for a bad day. He ran through his memories of paintings and set one up.

‘This is the Primavera…” Hannibal fell into a comfortable lecture, teaching a knowledge hungry Will that soaked in his every word. He occasionally cut in with his own commentary, serving for a comfortable conversation.

Meanwhile, Frederick stared at the surveillance footage of Hannibal’s cell. He leaned forward on the desk with the monitor, nearly nose to nose with the screen. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I think that’s called smiling, Chiton.” Alana cut in. Frederick looked away from the screen to give her a dirty look. 

“Yes, he’s been standing there smiling like a lunatic for the last hour.” 

“What else do you expect him to do? He’s probably doing it to sike you out.” 

“You’re right.” Frederick shook his head. “But still, it can’t just be me that finds that terrifying.” 

“He seems pretty pleased to me. He’s probably imagining freaking you out” Alana said, and Hannibal was in a way. 

************************************************************************************

He is until he isn’t. Today was a bad day, Hannibal realized. Usually, Hannibal would embrace a day where he felt something besides the all encompassing boredom of his cell. However, today was much worse. He woke up from a nightmare that had far too much of his memory embedded into it to be called just that. 

He remembered the bite of harsh winter, how freezing the layer of hell that his family’s cabin could be when his mother wasn’t tending to the fire. He could feel the loss of feeling on his skin, the scratch of carpeting pulled tight around him- a desperate solution that wasn’t enough-, and the useless, involuntary shuttering his tiny, malnourished body shook with in a vague attempt to fight the situation. He felt as if he had experienced it yesterday, and the memory of it made his skin crawl. 

He stayed in the small cot that served as his new bed, curled up with the thin sheets pulled around him. He tried his best to warm himself, but there wasn’t much of a solution in his cell, not that a physical solution would help much. Back home, he had his daily routine and the ways he manipulated it to keep his mind from this. Here though, he was vulnerable to remembering. 

Then came the hunger, a deep hunger that threatened to consume everything he was. He remembered long stretches with nothing but the scraps of his captors to sustain himself on. His captors only threw them to him, because they had taken him prisoner. He was chained to the banister with heavy iron links like a naughty dog kept waiting and waiting for its next meal. Though, his captors had thought him more of a cattle for slaughter now that he thought about it.

He can’t stop his thoughts from drifting from a particular taste. It’s hot water scolding his mouth, tinged with the taste of boiled bone and gristle. He has a hazy memory of slurping the liquid down, glad that his captors gave him something to fight the dizzy fever that kept him in a daze.

He hadn’t known at the time, Hannibal said to himself in his mind. His mouth still went dry, and his stomach churned. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t-

Hannibal gagged. His body fighting to empty his already empty stomach. He did it again and again, coughing up a string of saliva but nothing more. It took a minute for Hannibal’s stomach to settle. He laid on his bed, heaving tired breath in a tangle of sheets. But then, the air conditioning blew a breeze of freezing air against his skin, and Hannibal was back to his first problem. He shuffled his sheets, curling up once more. 

“Mischa, I’m sorry.” Hannibal rasped out loud. He closed his eyes and focused on breathing, trying to get a sense of control. 

But then, he felt the ghost of warm fingers along his cheek.He felt ghostly warm wrapping around him almost as if it was holding him. He could see Will’s face, soft with tender emotion. He could see him laying on his cot in some impossible configuration- his cot was barely big enough for Hannibal afterall. He imagined Will curled around him, something like the hugs they had shared a few times except this was more like cuddling. It took a few mind games to transpose past experiences onto Will, but he has an idea what it would be like to cuddle Will. 

And, Will was warm. So warm.

“So, you can say sorry.” Will said, his voice rumbling through his chest. The chest that Hannibal imagined resting his face against. 

He’s so warm. 

“Talk. Please.” 

Hannibal imagined a conversation from long ago, one where Will ran him through his current herd of dogs with such an excitement that it burned a place in his memory. He focused on remembering his inflection and the feeling of Will around him. Between it all, it lulled Hannibal into a certain state of calm.

That is until a slot opened up, and a tray slid across the tile floor. Breakfast, Hannibal realized. His stomach growled with hunger.

But when he looked at where the tray rested on the floor, he saw a mush that looked almost liquid from where he laid. It was a strange tan tint.

Almost like flesh, he thought. His stomach turned, and suddenly, he was back where he started back in the cold and hunger and loss...

“Hey, Hannibal.” Hannibal imagined fingertips ghosting his jaw, pulling him to focus on his face. They were intimately close, Will’s face full of concern and worry. His fingers search Hannibal’s face as if they could find a physical flaw as the cause. “Stay with me.” He finished. Hannibal imagined his breath brushing his mouth. 

If this were real, Hannibal might have just leaned in and captured Will’s lips. He might have given a warm, gentle show of affection or taken out his deep, gnawing hunger on him. He could’ve worshiped Will like God at an altar or destroyed him with the emotions in his heart. 

But, he wasn’t real, so he just took in the illusion of warmth until he drifted off to sleep. His breakfast went cold on his cell floor that day. 

“Things will get better one day.” 

********************************************************************************

The guards swarmed Hannibal in a hurried frenzy. They shoved him into a straightjacket and rammed a mouth guard on him before several guards flank him. They lead him out of the cell that had housed him for three years, out into that miserable grey hall he had stared at for so long, and out into one of the main mingling rooms for the inmates. He and the guards waited there.

Hannibal managed to piece together what was going on between his own snooping and listening in on his guards’ conversations. Hannibal smiled under his mouth guard.

“Told you it would get better.” Will said from where he stood amongst the guards. “Don’t fuck up this chance.”

Hannibal spared him a small nod before focusing on reality. Soon, his guards yank him along into a waiting SWAT car. Hannibal sat content in his spot for now as they drove off. His mind whirled with details of a plan and excitement. 

He was going to see Will in the flesh again after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comment what you think and hit kudos if you liked it!


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